Pizza Talk

Michael Kalanty was my faculty colleague when I taught at the California Culinary Academy back in the 1990’s. Since then, he and I have been on parallel tracks, both as educators, bread authors, and as product developers. In this episode, Michael shares his long and winding road from pastry chef, bread expert and educator, product developer for major food companies, and even how he became a “Certified Master Taster.” All…Read More…

Three years ago, Eidref Laxa started a podcast in San Jose, California as a way to learn everything he could about pizza so that, maybe, one day he could open his own pizzeria. Over 150 episodes later, “What’s Good Dough“ has become a goldmine of pizza knowledge, culled from the giants in the industry who have generously shared their knowledge with Eidref, who then shares it with his listeners. In…Read More…

Everyday, new pizzerias open everywhere to varying degrees of success. But what is it that causes some of them to immediately break from the pack and generate buzz and excitement? Geno DiPaolo and his daughter Gena somehow found that “secret sauce” to make it happen in Charlotte, NC, at their Geno D’s Pizza. Geno is known as by his fans as “Geno from Jersey,” and that is part, but not…Read More…

Welcome Back to Pizza Quest, Ann Arbor is one of the great college towns in the country, but it is equally revered in the food world as the home of Zingerman’s, the destination deli and bakehouse that has become a benchmark brand, the Zabar’s of the mid-west if I might be so bold.  But it is also a restaurant incubator, via their “Community of Businesses,” as witnessed by Miss Kim,…Read More…

Welcome back, everybody.         Tommy Garnick is known and loved throughout the pizza world as the Grand Champion of the 2019 California Milk Board Pizza Competition, and as the former owner of Brava Pizza in Denver, and as an instructor at The Fire Within Wood-Fired University. More recently, however, Tommy has relocated to Tucson, Arizona, where he and his partners are building a multi-purpose artisan culinary and crafts…Read More…

Welcome Back to Pizza Quest, Once upon a time in New York City 1999, there was a restaurant created by Chef Frank DeCarlo, built around a wood-fired oven, called Peasant. Who knew then that this now iconic place would foreshadow a movement toward cooking with wood that has embedded itself throughout our food culture. Chef Marc Forgione, a friend of DeCarlo’s and a regular at Peasant, was on his own…Read More…

Welcome to a new season of Pizza Quest (previously referred to as Pizza Talk)!  This season we’re going to push the envelope of that key word, Quest, and delve deeper into its meaning and how it plays out in the lives of our guests. Of course, we won’t abandon that other key word, Pizza, but many of the upcoming episodes will expand our scope, exploring our deeper missions: “A journey of self-discovery…Read More…

Hi All, Sourdough is taking over the world! There are a lot of reasons for this, and it goes way beyond flavor. One of the international driving forces of this tidal wave of interest is Vanessa Kimbell, who is the founder, author, and host of The SourdoughClub.UK.com and The SourdoughSchool.com (and three Sourdough School cookbooks).  Based in the UK, north of London, Vanessa has a huge following and is an…Read More…

Welcome back to Pizza Talk, not only to you, but to today’s guest, Mark Todd, aka The Cheese Dude. During his last visit Mark not only told us how he became The Dude, but then took us on a tour de force tour of the pizza community’s favorite cheese category, pasta filata, or as most of us recognize it, where mozzarella lives, and how it is distinct from all the…Read More…

Welcome back to Pizza Talk! So, who gets to coin a new culinary term, create his own publishing house, and travel the world taking gallery worthy photos in exotic places, eating the best food ever made, and hiring talented chefs and writers to create a whole new category of food literature? Nathan Myhrvold is who. After the international success of the five volume Modernist Cuisine (now in 12 language translations), followed…Read More…